Fern’s sitting on the couch and doesn’t know what to do. She gets up and goes to her room. She looks around her room: it’s a lavender colored room with dark green leaves painted on the bottom. The ground is brown wood, and the paint on the walls is shimmering, like dew drops in a spider web. Fern’s ceiling is black with thousands of clear white diamonds sparkling in the sunlight like distant stars.
Her bedsheets, pillows and blankets are huge green leaves that the leaf-cutter ants sewed together and stuffed with cotton. She has a big bookshelf that has a comfy wooden chair next to it. There is a plant in a purple pot, and her window overlooks her favorite kapok tree. There’s also a desk for drawing, a beautiful pink, purple, and white rug, and a bedside table and on the wall opposite of that is a golden mirror.
Above the bedside table, she has a portrait of her grandma and grandpa. Behind this portrait, Fern has a secret tunnel. She discovered the passage when she was nine and a half, with the help of her super duper duper duper duper bouncy ball. Fern just has to knock once in the middle of this portrait and the picture slides away to reveal the passage.
As Fern looks around her room now, she wonders if there are any other secret surprises in her room. Fern starts to look around for some passageways. First, she checks the mirror. She takes the mirror off, she knocks it three times, then two, then one, then all the other numbers in order up to her lucky number 11. And then, she tries to say a secret passage word, “abracadabra”, but that doesn’t work, and so Fern moves on to the next thing.
Fern goes to the bed. She goes underneath her bed but there’s no hole. So she takes off all her bed covers and sheets and even her mattress, but there’s nothing. She checks everything in her room, but there’s still nothing.
Then Fern has an idea: “What if the secret passageway is in the ceiling? What if it is hidden because it is black, just like the ceiling?!” she cries.
Fern goes downstairs and goes to the garage (where there is no car, but is where they keep all of their work supplies.)
Fern gets a ladder and heads back upstairs.
Mama Leopard is in the kitchen too busy to notice what Fern is doing.
Fern gets to her room and pushes the ladder through the doorway. Then she props it up against the wall and starts climbing up until she’s reached the ceiling. She feels around on the ceiling and finally comes to the biggest diamond on the ceiling – the moon.
For as long as Fern can remember, she has had a diamond shaped moon on her ceiling. Fern looks at it – there has to be a secret passage behind the moon. It’s the only place there could be a passage because she has checked everything else and she is almost positive there is another passageway from her room.
But how does it open? It feels like there’s a latch in a crack on the moon diamond. So Fern hooks her claws into the latch and pulls and pulls and pulls!
Suddenly, the moon slides quickly to the side and reveals a gaping hole like a mouth. Fern peeks inside – it’s pitch black. She goes down the ladder and gets a candle from the kitchen. Then she comes back to her room, climbs back up the ladder, lights the candle, and hops inside the passage. The passage has dark grey stone walls and seems to go on forever. It smells just like the outside rainforest and Fern starts walking. All she can see are the stone gray walls beside her, the stone ceiling, the stone floor, and the pitch blackness of the rest of the tunnel. Fern starts to feel afraid. She’s thinking “What if there’s something in this passage that eats leopards!?” But Fern tells herself not to worry. She knows that she’s a good fighter. Fern feels less afraid and keeps going.
An hour later, Fern sees the end of the tunnel. It goes off into the treetops and looks like it ends in a big treehouse. “Hey wait a minute,” thinks Fern. “I recognize that treehouse! That’s Patter’s Treehouse!Check out how she met Patter.” Fern met Patter the Panther by accident on one of her times exploring the rainforest just about two weeks ago.
She hurries along the tunnel and gets to the end. She goes across the treetops and finally ends up hurling herself onto Patter’s couch. Luckily the candle goes out and didn’t set anything on fire.
Patter is baking as usual. “Hey Fern,” he says, surprised. “What are you doing? How did you get in here? I didn’t hear you climbing up!”
“Uhh.” Fern mews to Patter, “Patter did you know that you have a secret tunnel that connects my house to yours?”
“I do?” He answers, sounding confused. “But that’s good to know! Why is there a secret passage connecting our houses together?”
“I have no idea” Fern answers. “But now we can visit each other faster! It connects to my room. Hey do you want to have a play date with me?”
“Sure” he replies. “Let me just pack up these cookies and I can bring them for you and Mama Leopard to eat.”
”Great!” Purrs Fern, “What flavor are they?”
“They are crunchy chocolate cookies!”
“Yum!” Meows Fern. “My favorite! Come on!” She looks around for the passage, but it’s not there! “Umm Patter, where did the passage go?”
“I don’t know. Let’s look for it.”
Fern is feeling around on the wall when suddenly she sees something in the far bottom corner of the wall. “Patter!” She calls, “I found it.”
“Great! Come on Fern!” He dives into the blackness. He is carrying a tray full of chocolate cookies and somehow none of them spill because of magic.
“Wait for me” calls Fern into the blackness. She dives in after Patter and immediately starts running forward into the pitch darkness. She accidentally leaves the candle over at Patter’s but that doesn’t matter now that she knows there is nothing else in there except for Patter and her.
“Hey Fern,” Patter calls, “What’s your room like? I’ve never been there.”
“Oh,” says Fern, “It’s pretty cool…” she explains everything about her room to Patter as they run along the passage back to her room.
One hour later Fern is still running but then she sees the light of her room up ahead and stops talking. “Hey Patter,” she calls to him “We’re almost there!” And she starts running even faster. Soon they burst out of the passage and land headfirst in her bed.
“Wow,” Patter purrs, “your room is really beautiful.”
“I know” Fern meows smiling.
Just then Patter and Fern hear Mama Leopard’s voice calling from the kitchen. “Fern! Lunchtime!” She calls.
“Well,” says Patter, “I guess it’s time to eat”
“Yup” says Fern still smiling.
They wink at each other and hurry down the stairs.
“I don’t know how you got here,” says Mama Leopard to Patter, “You didn’t even open the door…”
The end.
